And they called it Bucky Love

Part 27 - Killing Bucky Barnes

I looked at the Winter Soldier in disbelief.

"What do you mean - you betrayed me?"  I put my hands up to my head.    "Am I going crazy?"

He raised his head and looked at me with those steely blue eyes.   "No" he said "you're not crazy, there's just an awful lot you still don't know."

"Then please...." I proferred "pray do tell."   I knew I sounded as sarcastic as hell, but I really didn't care.  I needed to know what was going on, and it was getting worse by the minute.

The Winter Soldier looked directly at me before he spoke this time.    "Okay." he said softly. "But you need to be prepared to listen with open ears and consider everything I'm about to tell you."   He looked at me so intently then, I thought his eyes were going to burn into my skull.

I nodded and sat back down on the floor again.  I let the pistol drop to my side and waited for the words to come.

The Winter Soldier took a deep breath.   "You now know who I am - yes?"

"Yes."

He took an even longer breath.   "Okay, so you know what I've done......." he hesitated.  "In the past, I mean."

I nodded again.  "Yes, I know.    The Winter Soldier was an asset created by Hydra, used for assassinations and generally doing their dirty work when they didn't want to get their own hands grubby."

He looked at me from under his dark eye lashes.  "Okay, well, putting it in a simple form yes, okay.   The point I'm trying to make is that, as the Winter Soldier, I've done things that as the 'other' me, would never have happened.  I've hurt people and I've killed and those are things that I'm not proud of.   But I need you to understand why some of those things happened."

My ears pricked up when he talked about another version of him, as it resonated with me and everything that had been said so far.

He carried on.  "Maggie - " His voice seemed to break a little and he almost sounded as though he wasn't going to be able to speak.   "Maggie - I need to tell you something.    I was there when your parents were killed."

I froze.    What did he just say?

He looked at me with pleading eyes.    "Maggie......did you hear me?"

All of a sudden, his voice seemed to be coming from a million miles away and I couldn't hear the words that were coming from his lips.      My ears felt like they were pounding with blood and I felt a rage come up from my feet, through my body and out to my hands, where the one that was holding the pistol then raised, until the weapon was pointing directly at the Winter Soldiers head.

I vaguely heard Zola shout out "Yes!   Do it!  Do it now fraulein!   He's your mission!"  as I became aware of a loud commotion at the entrance to the room.

Everything became hazy at that point and it all seemed to go into slow motion from there on.  My ears still seemed to be blocking out sound in the weirdest way, so that anyone who was making a noise, sounded like they were talking through water.   

I saw that Zola had got up from the floor and was trying to run out of the cavern, but his way was blocked by a woman with red hair in a tight fitting cat suit, who promptly put her arm out and knocked him clean off his feet.   

I swung round and then saw  a tall blonde haired man in a blue costume with a white star on it, running across towards me.  He was yelling something, but I couldn't hear what.    I'd swear it almost sounded like he was shouting the word magpie at me.........

I realized then that I still had my pistol raised and that my mission was right there in front of me still as weak as a new born kitten.     He was trying to move, but his legs wouldn't work, and I could see through the haze that he was mouthing the word "No!" at me, but by that time, nothing would have made any difference.

It happened then.     I went back into automatic mode and Yuliya Sokolov took over once more. 

In the split second that it took for the man in the blue costume to reach me, I had fired my gun at the Winter Soldier, and as I was pushed down to the ground, just before losing consciousness, I saw the face of my mission, lying there on the floor, steely blue eyes staring dully at me, from within a pool of blood.